Kodak Alaris, a top enterprise solutions provider, has launched an end-to-end solution for management of elections including ballot paper processing technology, design, print, logistics and the associated professional services.

David Whitton, general manager of Kodak Alaris Information Management - Eastern Cluster (Middle East, Africa, East Europe, Turkey & Russia) said: “The future of elections is undoubtedly digital technology and most electoral management bodies must adopt new solutions to improve the electoral process, both in terms of speed and transparency of the results.”

“Digital in this case doesn’t mean electronic voting but rather digitizing ballot papers and processing the information after it’s scanned. The requirement for this is a reliable scanning and software solution to help save time and reduce errors when tallying the votes,” he added.

With the Kodak Alaris solution, ballots can be presented in any orientation and it handles varying sizes of ballot papers, which is dictated by the number of candidates on the ballot. All of the scanning takes place within one unit.

This allows the solution to be centrally administered with the various job profiles being drawn down to the relevant counting centre and processing line. This flexibility means that should there be a rare machine failure, the ballots can easily be processed on another, ensuring the results are gathered in the required time.

Kodak Alaris offers an end-to-end ballot processing solution. This includes high-volume scanners with integrated sorters, ballot paper processing & exception handling software, ballot paper design, secure printing and delivery, on-site ballot processing operations and training. Kodak Alaris works with government agencies to design ballot papers and reduce the risk of fraud. Such security features are embedded in the ballot papers and activated in the counting process to remove the possibility of duplication and forgery.

“The strength in the Kodak Alaris solution is the ability to place the ballot papers in any orientation in the scanner and the machine can still process the ballot sheet,” said Whitton.

“This is a marked improvement from earlier systems where the sheets had to be placed in a very specific manner. Obviously as numbers go up, the chances of error increase and the amount of labour increases greatly. Failure/ return rate from analogue technology is quite high, and the processing speed is slow.

“Speed and accuracy go up considerably by working with digital technology. Adopting a digital strategy has benefits of improving efficiency and thereby cutting cost. Besides the security, compliance, time savings and reduction of errors, one of the main benefits is that the solution results in transparency and reassures the public that the process is legitimate,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service